Psychology
for Lawyers james r. elkins

jordan b. peterson

Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist. He taught for
eight years at Harvard, and has been a professor at the University of
Toronto since 1998. Peterson is the author of the book, Maps of
Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (New York: Routledge, 1999)
[online
text of Maps of Meaning] and 12 Rules
for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Random House Canada, 2018).

Personality and Its Transformation

2017 Personality & Its Transformation

Lecture 1: Introduction
to the Course [53:47 mins.] [Peterson notes the
difficulty in defining exactly what we mean by personality and what
constitutes personality and what constitutes something else. Human beings
are incredibly complicated.]

Lecture
2: Playable & Non-Playable Games [1:10:53 mins.] [knowing the object/material world]
["our knowledge is finite in every direction"] [reality
and truh definitions of reality] ["there are many different ways
of viewing the world"] ["science refuses to give answers
as to what you should do"; science must be nestled in something
beyond science] [reviewed to 10:20 mins.]

1996 Maps of Meaning (Harvard University)
[14 videos] [An advanced undergraduate
seminar from 1996 at Harvard, taught to psychology majors. It is an
early version of Peterson's course, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture
of Belief, which is based on the book of the same name.]

How You Create
Your Own Reality[7:54 mins.] [Peterson commentary ends at 4:18
mins.] ["Pay attention and listen on the off chance that the person
you're talking to might have something to say." We need to be aware
of our own ignorance; that we still have something left to learn."]
[Comments on sacrifice.]

Encountering
Obstacles in Life [7:16 mins.] [seeing what gets in your way; novel
occurrences; the mystery of something that is not supposed to exist;
constrained chaos beneath everything that we think we are; the shark
in Jaws; the dragon, predator that has been deemed irrelevant
suddenly manifests itself, and thus the trauma; now you don't know where
you are, and since you don't know where you are everything is relevant]

Say No to Happiness[54:00 mins.] [audio] [an introduction by Paul
Kennedy who talks about our fascination with the idea of happiness;
Frank Falk is the narrator of the audio documentary] [Peterson appears
at 12:19 mins. and ends at 14:51 mins., appears again at 22:12 mins.
and ends at 23:46 mins., and again at 25:00 mins. to 25:54 mins.]

The Tyrannical
Father & Society[6:40 mins.] [excerpt from 2015 Maps of Meaning
course lecture: "The Great Father"] [class presentation on Jung's idea
of seeing the fantasy in the emotion, begin video at 2:00 mins. and
end at 4:30 mins.]

Dealing
with Suicide and Depression[8:10 mins.] [minimalizing anomalous events; relationship
of anomalous events to one's value system; a sense of meaning orients
us (a positive way of thinking about psychology); meaning is a real/actual
phenomena; you need something positive you can rely on]

The Evolution
of Dominance Hierarchies
[4:31 mins.] [chimpanzee domiance hierarchy; prototypical morality found
in animals; the cost of winning in a dominance dispute; the use of mock
conflict]

Human Hierarchies[6:51 mins.] [people are different than animals;
"we have multiplied our dominance hierarchies"; "if you're
creative you can come up with your own dominance hierarchy" ("you
spin up a game that is your game"; "you can be the best at
playing that game"); with the appearance of multiple domanince
hierarchies, there is an "ability to be successsful across a set
of dominance hierarchies"; "a human being is a creature that
has a high potential for succeeding across a very wide range of human
dominance hierarchies"; the hero is a representation of the capacity
to succeed across dominance hierarchies; "we're this weird general
purpose animal"; "we can go anywhere and thrive"--and
this relates to the hero mythology]

Make Something
of Yourself! [8:17 mins.] [arguing for the place of hierarchies
of competence] ["Maybe you wouldn't be a great lawyer." Comment
at 5:32 mins.] ["we need hierarchies of competence"; we need
to know who the best are so we can reward them, and they will continue
to be good; the idea that hierarchies of competence don't exist is "pathologically
cynical; hierarchies can be corrupt; "our hierarchies of competence
are reasonably function" and "they are valuable"; "go
be a plumber, but be a good one"; "if you're going to be a
plumber be a good one, otherwise you'd do nothing but case problems";
there are multiple hiearchies of competence; "work and get to the
top"]

How to Rise to
the Top of the Dominance Hierarchy[14:02 mins.] [commenting on Piaget (and his ethology
of human beings) and his argument that morality arises out of play;
"every social animal is embedded in a dominance hierarchy";
there are thousands of these hierarches; if take multiple hierarches
and abstract "what is central to all of them," you find a
"pyramid of value"; and what's do we find at the top of the
pyramid of value (which is "deeply rooted in biology and cutlure"
which means "you don't just brush this off"; "you have
a counter at the bottom of your brain that keeps track of where you
are in terms of your status . . . and it regulates the sensitivity of
your emotions so if you are at the bottom of the hierarch, barely clinging
on to the world, everything overwhelms you. You are damn near dead.
. . . You become sensitive to negative emotion."; commentary on
Jung and the gods; is there a way of being that suggest you are going
to move up in the dominance hierarchies?" (Peterson notes that
these hierarchies are "not arbitrary and random") (Peterson
poses this instructive question but then veers off to talk about Jung,
archetypes and imagination (telling us that "your imagination is
looking for things to fill itself with" and this is "how"
we "deal with the unknown"); Peterson reads Jung to say that
we look "down into the belly of the beast to see what lurks in
the imagination?" and what we find there are the archetypes and
"patterns of adaptive behavior"); Peterson returns to dominance
hierarchy theor 101: "dominance hierarchies are the standard ways
animals in a territory organize themselves"; "human beings
are watching these dominance hierarchies since we became self-aware
thinking 'what the hell are we up to? what the hell are we up to?'";
Peterson finally returns to the question that he asked: "is there
a way of being that suggest you are going to move up dominance hierarchies?"
The answer is found in imagination ("your imagination is looking
for things to fill itself with"); imagination is found, following
Jung, "down in the belly of the beast" where archetypal imagination
lies' so what lies at the top of the pyramid? --speech, --vision ("You
have a vision of your own ideal." It must be articulated. --"willingness
to confront the terrible unknown" ("heroic
willingness to confron the unknown"); according to Peterson there
is no more noble vision than this--it will make you "admirable
and valuable."]

Set Your Goals
Up Hierarchically [11:44 mins.] [you are made up of a set of subpersonalities
("quasi-autonomous subsystems"; "personality units");
"its one emotional frame after another vying for dominance; reference
to "pyramids of competence" and what we want at the top of
them: "the thing that pays attention and learns"; all this
"maps onto the neurostructure of your being"; "you want
to put something in control" and what you want to be in control
is "the thing that pays attention and learns"' a GPS unit
is close to the idea of intelligence--they tell you where you are at
and where you are going, and if you get off track they recalculate to
get you back on course; what is the story at the top of the hieararchy?"]

The Male Dominance
Hierarchy[11:29 mins.] ["the dominance hierarchy is
permanent" and "all our wiring is conditional on that";
Peterson, early in the commentary notes that "you can bargain with
reality" ("the reality you encounter . . . is an abstract
social system"): "you can bargain with the future"; we
share an evolutionary path with plants and animals; "the central
spirit of the individual," something that we have evolved, means
that we are indidviduals who can move up the dominance hierarchy; "we
are always trying to figure out who we are. As we watch that we tell
stories about what people who can climb the hierarchy is like and that
is the hero" (the hero is the one who kills the snake, who slays
the dragon); we start to tell stories bout the hero, and we find "our
stories are pushing us in this direction"]

Jordan Peterson,
Dave Rubin, & Onkar Ghate on Free Speech[1:47:49 mins.] [Clemson] [Peterson's initial presentation
begins at 8:20 mins. and ends at 11:50 mins.; see also 16:35 mins. to
19:48 mins. (on being ignorant, which is where we start out, and this
state being the foundation for the need for speech; "speech is
a canonical value"; begin again at 23:40 mins.to 27:36 mins.; 32:40
mins. to 35:53 mins. ("part of wisdom is knowing what to be afraid
of"; "you have to pilot yourself through life"; "your
mind is wired up so you can determine threats"; this segment is
an exquisite summary of how determining to engage in speech is related
to who you are as a person); 36:48 mins. to 41:23 mins. ("we speak
being into existence"; "a lot of you is unarticulated";
we learn to believe the lies we tell ourselves and others; "do
not pollute your character"; "don't say things you don't believe");
44:54 mins. to 48:14 mins. (comments on the consequences of seeing ourselves
as members of particular groups; men and women and their varying intrinsic
interests; the group does not define the content of the spirit; beware
of these three words: "equity," "diversity," "inclusiveness");
50:05 mins. to 52:10 mins. (on archetypes); 55:21 mins. to 56:30 mins.
(you have an internal tyrant; "you don't want to be a slave to
your own tyrant"); 57:06 mins. to 59:30 mins. (on how to learn
to be articulate--learn to write; "the act of writing is being
something new into being"; "you can educate yourself";
"read what you should read"; 1:21:27 mins. to 1:22:58 mins.
(Peterson's comments on today's journalist and journalism seems, to
me, off the mark)] [streamed live on October 19, 2017] ["we are
in a vicious war over the nature of reality"]

Exploring the
Psychology of Creativity[50:41 mins.] [reference to some of the basic dispositional
traits--conscientious, introversion and extraversion; agreeableness,
openness (creativity and openness are more or less synonomous), neuroticism]
[March 9, 2017, National Gallery of Canada]

H3 Podcast #37
[Jordan Peterson appears, in a serious vain, at 4:38
mins.] [noting that he estimates that he has some 600 hours of video
on YouTube] [identifies himself, by traits of temperament, a "liberal
person"; "radicalism in the service of traditionalism"]
[Peterson comments, at 4156 mins., why he is doing his Psychological
Significance of the Biblical Stories lectures] [at 59:52 to 1:01:26
mins., Peterson makes an insightful statement about Hitler, who "acting
out the dark desire of the mob"] [at 1:04:57 mins., Peterson describes
traits of temperament, with comments ending at 1:10:22 mins.] [talks
about the need to have an "aim"; we are, according to Peterson,
"aiming creatures"] [on complexity, 1:18:24 mins. to 1:21:00
mins.] [looking at the idea of sanity, at 1:24:58 mins. to 1:26:02 mins.;
"we outsource much of our sanity"] [trained as a cognitive-behavioral
psychologist (1:35:21 mins.)] [the discipline that makes it possible
for one to write a book, at 1:36:06 mins.; "you have to fight like
a junk-yard dog to get your own time"]

Michael Knowles
Interviews Jordan Peterson[33:5 4 mins.] [commentary on the ideologies|simplifications|biased
heuristics|belief systems that we adopt; "grand stories that structure
our lives," that is, "archetypal narratives" (including
"the archetype of unexplored territory"; at ^:47 mins. Peterson
comments on nature|chaos|unknown "("what exists beyond the
campfire")(suggesting that the known|unknown, order|chaos is the
"archetypal state of mankind")("archetypal themes are
deep motivation structures"); at 29:00 mins. Peterson comments
on C.G. Jung and refers to his advice: "stop saying things that
make you weak"; being socialized is one thing, living with falsity
is still another; "you know when you are betraying yourself")]

Jordan Peterson
@ Lafayette, A Conversation and Q&A[2:47:35 mins.] [April, 2018] [[Peterson introduces
himself to the audience, at 4:22 mins.--12:16 mins; talks about the
15 years he spent writing Maps of Meaning, his obsession with
the cold war and his curiosity about what was going on with the modern
day slaughters of the 20th century; learning the value of narrative;
reading Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Jung, the great clinicians (in
psychology and psychiatry), neuroscience; the psychological importance
of individualism; teaching what he had learned from his reading; involvement
in political controversy in Canada (focusing on the problem of "compelled
speech")] [12:18 mins.--23:26 mins., responding to student's criticism
of Peterson's appearance on campus as a speaker which Peterson finds
to be the "chattering buzz of ideologically possessed demons";
are you hearing a person or someone who is ideologically possessed?;
rejecting the idea of "ordinary people" (and how interesting
a person is when they talk about what they want to talk about); people
don't realized that they are possessed by an ideology; there is a space
between the radical right and the radical left; an ideological stance
is convenient; "I'm not anti-left, I know that the left addresses
a serious, deep problem--radical inequality"; things can go to
far on the left, and on the right; it's hard for those on the left to
draw the line as to things going too far because the left has difficulty
drawing lines; the left goes too far left in their demands for equality
of outcomes] [24:50 mins., Peterson comments on how he is viewed in
such extreme terms; it may be in a part a matter of temperament; an
outline of strength in negotiation; thinking through the consequences
of speaking out on the "compelled speech" issue; reading Viktor
Frankel; learning the cost of staying silent; steps that take us down
a path we don't want to go] [33:25 mins.; Marxism and and the right;
Nazis and Communists; "what is happening on the left is murky"
and it doesn't seem so repugnant as what happened with the Nazis; lack
of historical knowledge; "there is a deafening silence" by
the left about 20th century atrocities] [46:32 mins., commenting on
modern-day politics, and the relative dangers of the radical left and
the radical right; the situation in Canada is different than that in
the U.S.; reference to identity politics (and his disdain for it); the
danger to the academy is posed by the left, not the right] [52:56 mins.,
ethnic groups and IQ (and the problem with desperate outcomes of different
ethnic groups); Peterson begins his comments talking about early childhood
anti-social behavior and the link to later criminality; if the job is
complex, then the best prediction is general cognitive ability; prediction
of success (performance prediction) can be related to trait-consciousness;
IQ test is psychometrically as good as it gets ("IQ is reliable
and valid" as any psychological measure that we have); the Army's
work on IQ; 1:06:12 mins., the complexity of talking about IQ and racial
differences ("first, there is the thorny problem of defining race");
"we confuse intelligence with human value" (there seems to
be no relation between virtue and intelligence)] [1:13:56 mins., presented
with the association of "European pride" with white supremacy,
and ethnic identity; the West has got some things right, including the
sovereignty of the individual (and we should recognize this as a "miracle,"
it's not a matter of pride)] [1:19:48 mins., Peterson is presented a
comment about Islam and the Muslim world; "one of the problems
is that I'm an ignorant man" and it would require years of study
to understand the difference between Islam and the West; "there
is a problem, there is no distinction between church and state in Islam,
and there is in the West"; a bedrock of our culture is the separation
of church and state; the hope we found in Turkey that was founded on
secularization, and the problems that country now faces; the hope that
people of goodwill can built a bridge between Islam and the West] [1:25:00
mins., Difference in compassion on the part of men and women; Peterson
responds by commenting on political correctness and his attempts to
study it by way of a social science research study; study found two
clumps that reflect political correctness (predicted by trait-agreeableness
and being female); the research is not extensive] [1:51:40 mins.--1:54:32
mins., Peterson comments on how complex we are as human beings, and
how we act on axiomatic beliefs which are, at bottom, religious in nature]
[1:57:23 mins.--2:00:20 mins., on stories] [2:01:14 mins.--2:02:34 mins.,
commenting on institutional racism] [2:03:10 mins.-- 2:07:30 mins, commenting
on postmodernism and its proponents; giving postmodernism its due; "you
can't throw all the postmodernists into the same jug"] [2:09:20
mins.--2:10:39 mins., putting yourself together]

Lectures & Presentations

Resurrection
of Logos[2:34:51 mins.] [March, 2017] [Peterson's presentation
begins at 51:59 mins.] [on setting out not to lie; learning of his two
selves, at 1:12:00 mins. and ends at 1:15:46 mins.]

Dragons, Divine
Parents, Heroes and Adversaries: A Complete Cosmology of Being[1:14:41 mins.] [at 3:34 mins., Peterson talks about
the early reading that he did to learn why we have particular belief
systems; "I am definitely not a moral relativist"; "it
is necessary for you to look at the world through a limited frame of
reference" (at 5:53 mins.); you're brain is primarily a reducing
agent (as is much else); "we deal with the complexity of the world
in part by inhabited a a series of reducing elements" (end at 7:38
mins.)]

Jordan B Peterson
vs David Benatar: Antinatalism[1:32:14 mins.]
[audio only] [January 9. 2018] [Peterson, at 7:11 mins. states what
he has expressed elsewhere, that we exist in an "existential conundrum"
and that we cannot escape suffering]